


Saving Tony

by WritingPains



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Domestic Avengers, Hurt Tony, Hurt Tony Stark, Kidnapped Tony Stark, Post-Avengers (2012), Tony Feels, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Tony Stark-centric, Tony-centric, Worried Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-05
Updated: 2019-05-05
Packaged: 2020-02-26 11:43:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18716380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WritingPains/pseuds/WritingPains
Summary: Tony wakes up in a room with a man looming over him.Steve discovers Tony is missing 16 hours after he was kidnapped.





	Saving Tony

Tony has been inside the dark room for an undeterminable amount of time. It certainly feels like it’s been at least a day, though it’s hard to tell, what with the slipping in and out of consciousness. He feels out of sorts, and he’s not sure how much of it is from exhaustion and what he supposed are drugs he’s been filled with. He’s in a little pain. Aches here and there that aren’t just the byproduct of ageing. A throbbing a headache, a sharp pain in his lungs that is worse than the normal effect of the Arc Reactor. The gnawing pain in his stomach would force him to double-over if it wasn’t for the fact that he was strapped to a cold metal bed in a way that left no room for manoeuvring.  
Tony has given up trying to call for help. His throat sorely protested after so long screaming obscenities and demanding to be untied. He’s only served to make himself more tired and thirstier.  
As far as he can tell, there are no cameras in here, which means whoever put him there is only going to show up when they want to, no earlier, no later. He could die before they decide to show up, and he’s not confident that he could free himself, no matter how long he’s stuck there for. And if they don’t go to that extreme, and magnanimously grace him with their presence beforehand, he could still be forced to deal with many unpleasant and humiliating side-effects of not being allowed to move for a long time. First and foremost, the unpleasant pressure in his bladder.  
Since he woke up, he’s tried his best to back-track to where he was before he woke up here, but everything is a strange blank. He truly has no idea. And though he knows he shouldn’t be here, he’s not exactly certain where he should be. Should he be in Afghanistan?  
No.  
That was too long ago, he’s sure of it. A year at least.  
Then, maybe he should be in the tower. He had built a tower, hadn’t he? With Pepper? But no, that seems like it’s quite far in his distant memory, too.   
Weren’t there people in the tower with him? Other than Pepper? Other than J.A.R.V.I.S. He misses them all enough that it’s physically painful.  
Push it away, whispers a voice. Emotions won’t solve your problems.  
The voice, which suspiciously sounds like his father, is right. Tony can’t afford to waste time feeling things. He needs to make a plan.  
So he goes further back, right up until the aftermath of the New York mess.  
He hates the way his chest tingles with the failed attempt from Loki to take over his mind. Hates the thundering of panic that slices through him when he thinks about the portal. Hates the way that he feels dizzy with the accusations from Steve. That he’s not the one to lay down on the line, that he wouldn’t make the sacrifice play. He has been reckless in the past. Shown himself to be nothing more than an arrogant arsehole. He wasn’t thinking about anything beyond the possibility of protecting the people he cared about the most, even if it was through an avenue that wasn’t necessarily the safest or wisest option.  
Give him a break, though. After the life he’s led? After what he experienced in Afghanistan? What was he expected to do? Kick back and idly watch as the people he held closest to his heart get hurt? He had to protect what was his. He wasn’t built to do anything else and probably will never settle for less.  
“Hello, Stark.”  
Tony twitches on the bed and looks over at an unfamiliar man stalking into the room, turning on the bare bulb above him.  
“Please to make your acquaintance.”

~*~*~

Steve is trying not to listen to Clint whining about how there’s nothing on TV after surfing through over five hundred channels. The number alone makes Steve’s head spin, so he does his best not to think about it. It’s all already far too much to be taking in, and he’s had a fair few years to really try and understand the complexities of this modern life.  
“Steve, are you listening?”  
“To your whining? No. I’m actively not listening.”  
Clint huffs out his annoyance and turns back to the TV only to start surfing all over again. Steve will likely never fully understand the weird behaviours of the technological generation, but if he had to pick his least favourite, this is it.  
“I’m going to see Tony,” Steve decides. “Make sure he’s not starving to death or sleeping at his desk again.”  
Clint hums his approval and Steve leaves him to be discontent with the endless options of entertainment. The elevator ride is fast, faster than normal, and it sets his heart racing.  
“JARVIS?”  
“Yes, Captain?”  
“Is everything OK?”  
JARVIS's silence says too much, and the instant the doors are open, Steve is barrelling out and towards the workshop, which is unlocked and transparent.  
“Tony?” Steve calls into the still lab. “Tony!”  
“Sir hasn’t been in his workshop for sixteen hours.”  
Sixteen hours?  
“Where is he?”  
“My systems were rebooting. When I came back online, sir was gone.”  
Steve pushes back against the panic that threatens to cloud his mind, like a storm predicting the misfortunes to come. He has to keep a clear head and work to figure out exactly what is going to come about from this development.  
There’s a chance Tony just went out. Steve’s noticed how little Tony seems to drink now, but there’s no saying that he didn’t go off the rails and get drunk somewhere, but Steve can’t rely on that.  
So, rather than think about all the worst possible things that could have happened, Steve searches the lab for any signs that Tony didn’t leave of his own volition.  
He rounds the corner by a worktop with chemicals and a holoscreen showing a purple floating ball. One sweeping glance at the area shows him all the evidence he needs to call the team in.  
A smashed mug of coffee and a de-activated Dum-EE laying in pieces. It looks as though Tony was in the middle of fixing him before he was startled by something, causing him to drop his mug.  
And there’s nothing short of a mission alert that would cause Tony to leave Dum-EE in such a state.  
“JARVIS, call the Avengers down here,” Steve orders. “Tony has been taken.”

~*~*~

Tony glares at the newcomer as he leans over the bed, his face directly above Tony’s own. The man's smile is wide and his white teeth and perfectly straight. His facial hair is trimmed, and he smells clean. So, he’s not some frenzied person looking for unadulterated payback on Tony for an imagined slight. This is a put-together human being. With his smart suit and an intelligent spark in his eye, Tony knows he’s in trouble.  
He has a lot of experience with stupidity and kidnappings, and he knows that when the kidnapper is an idiot, his chances of escape go up considerably. However, this is not his first rodeo with someone who has an IQ over sixty, so he knows he can get out, given the chance, but only if the opportunity arises.  
He’s painfully aware that his last high-profile kidnapping, his longest stint under the hand of someone else, was something he only survived because of Yinsen, but he can’t just give up hope because he’s on his own here.  
Except, are you really? A stupidly optimistic part of his mind asks. Don’t you have an entire team of superheroes that will notice you’re gone and do whatever it takes to get you home safely?  
Which, as a question in itself, brings the fear that he doesn't. Rhodey and Pepper, for all the cracks in their relationships, are the only people he can steadfastly believe are on his side no matter what.  
“Who…” Tony coughs past the dryness of his mouth. “Who are you?”  
The man appears to have not heard, and unless he’s deaf and purposefully not wearing a hearing aid, Tony knows he had to have. Which means he’s ignoring him, which… rude. But what can he do?  
Nothing.  
He’s currently without options, other than to suffer through this man’s evil tirade, or torture sessions or whatever else he has to come his way.  
“I’m not going to bore you with a long list of things that I’m going to do. Best leave something to the imagination, eh? No. I’ll wait for you to find that out on your own. Instead, let me explain why you’re here.”  
A stupid part of Tony’s mind is glad that he’s not woken up with any alterations to his body. He really doesn’t want to be waking up with any more car batteries attached to his heart. He’s getting old and there’s only so much trauma he can take. He might not survive it a second time around.  
“You, Dr Stark, single-handedly ruined my entire life.”  
If Tony had a dollar for every time someone said that to him, he’d be twice as rich as he already is. People have always been quick to blame their problems on him. He’s an easy target for hate, which as much as he doesn’t like it, he understands to an extent. People see him in this seat of absolute privilege and detest the way he squanders it, as though he doesn’t understand what life would be like with less of a silver spoon.  
Once upon a time, though, they were right. He was arrogant, had no concept of hardships beyond hangovers and Daddy not loving him enough. He was the typical rich kid with no care for life past the tip of his nose.  
But the same can’t be said about him anymore. Hell, his attitudes started changing the moment he became close with Rhodey and saw the way he was treated differently (and sometimes horribly) simply because of the colour of his skin. Tony knew that something was afoot, but he didn’t change his ways dramatically. He just broadened his perspective a little, altered the way he interacted with certain people, and went on his merry way, not really giving it much more thought.  
Then, his parents died. His problems escalated from ‘daddy doesn’t love me’ to ‘I’m all alone’. He still had Rhodey, of course, but that almost didn’t matter to him at the time. He was so caught up in his grief, so determined to drown out his pain with drugs and alcohol, that he completely ignored Rhodey and what he represented.  
It took Jarvis asking Rhodes to come to the mansion and having him nursing Tony through the worst of his alcohol poisoning and then being given a rather harsh dressing down about his behaviours for him to realise that he wasn’t alone at all. Rhodey was there for him, for better or worse. And Jarvis would always care for him, even if he went being paid to do it anymore.  
So, his prospects brightened a little and he slowed down the drinking. He didn’t stop, but he didn’t go crazy as much as he had before. Jarvis didn’t need to worry as much, Rhodes was happy and Tony changed his perspectives again.  
Then, Jarvis died. He’d been there for Tony since he was a baby, caring for him in all the ways a parent was supposed to. His death hit as hard as his parents had, possibly even harder. He couldn’t handle it. He withdrew from the world, locked down his workshop and invented things until his fingers bled and he collapsed from exhaustion. He didn’t surface for a month, and when he did, he found Rhodey waiting for him and was forced into bed rest for a week. Rhodey didn’t leave his side the entire time. Tony pretended to hate it, but he felt better just for having his best friend with him the entire time.  
More things happened; more changes were made. Tony’s past is but a shadow of the person he has grown into.  
However, Tony’s messy journey into adulthood was plastered over the news and people who saw that formed an unfavourable opinion of him. So, Tony resents that people see him as this spoiled rich kid, but he understands why. He just wishes they could see that Tony has come a long way from being the person who held a narrow, rose-tinted view of the world. He’s evolved. With every death of a loved one, with every betrayal from those he thought he could trust, he’s grown.  
So, Tony has to wonder exactly what he did to this particular man for him to deserve this. Is it real or imagined? Is this man just good at hiding the crazy?  
“You killed my daughter.”  
Tony’s stomach clenches at the raw pain in the man's eyes.

~*~*~

“What is the latest?” Nat asks as she answers a video call from Fury.  
“Not much, Widow. We’ve heard neither hide nor hair on Stark’s position.”  
Nat sighs heavily, rubbing a hand down her face.  
“This isn’t good. I’m not sure the man can survive another Afghanistan.”  
“I wouldn’t be so quick to have so little faith in him,” Fury admonishes. “Stark has survived worse since.”  
“You haven’t been around him lately, Sir.”  
Fury stills.  
“What do you mean?”  
“She means,” Clint cuts in, “Stark has been having nightmares about New York, panic attacks, he’s been quiet, subdued. If I had to guess, I’d say that the man is emptier than he was before. If he really has been kidnapped, then he might not be in the right mind to save himself. He might not have the strength, or hell, even the desire.”  
“Barton, are you saying he’s suicidal?”  
“As close as someone can get without making an attempt on their own life. Yeah.”  
Fury watched Natasha’s face closely. As much as Barton is a valued member of the team, he often takes things too lightly or too emotionally. Romanoff, on the other hand, is all business and she’s the one to turn to for an accurate reading on someone else.  
Unfortunately, the slight inclination of her head says far more than Fury wants it to.  
Barton is right. Tony isn’t in his right mind to try and save himself. He needs their help, and Fury isn’t sure they’ll be able to give it. Whoever took Tony knew what they were doing. There are no traces of him anywhere and no suspects to follow.  
“Keep us updated,” Nat requests before cutting off the call.  
They sit in silence for a heated moment, all of them uncomfortable with the absence of their teammate.  
“Steve has called Rhodey, who’s called Pepper, who told Happy, who is blaming it on security badges or something,” Clint says, after putting his phone away.  
“Hopefully someone can give us a clue as to where he’s been taken.”  
Neither Nat nor Clint seem particularly optimistic about this.

Steve hasn’t stopped for anything other than irregular naps throughout the last two days. It’s hard enough knowing that Bucky is out there, beyond his reach, but Tony was under his protection while they lived in the tower together. He shouldn’t have been vulnerable to an attack while there has been at least three Avengers in the tower at any given time.  
They may not always get along, having a long history of falling out over the few months they’ve known each other, but Steve knows that neither of them would bail when it came to help the other. Neither would want the other hurt in any way. They’re still friends, despite their tendency to fall out over minor things.  
So, Steve can’t allow himself to stop. He doesn’t know what Tony is suffering through, and he has to make sure he can put an end to it as soon as possible.

~*~*~

Tony writhes on the metal bed, screaming in agony. The man has attached clamps to the side of the bed, and he jacks up the electricity apparently on a whim. He periodically takes the time to inflict some other pain upon Tony’s person, though he changes the means. Sometimes he throws an unfocused punch, or he slaps his face, or he slams his head against the bed. He doesn’t smile while he watches Tony. He’s not some sadistic monster, Tony notes. He’s someone that is grieving, even if Tony’s still in the dark about his part in the death of his daughter. He’s suffering and apparently this is his choice of release.  
Tony is a mess.  
After the first day (he’s guessing at the time, since he has no way to tell) he’d been shocked into releasing his bladder. The man has sneered at him, disgusted, and had hosed him down with a powerful spray of water.  
Tony couldn’t see the whole room, but he could tell that the water level in the room dissipated almost immediately because when the man moved, there was no evidence of water ever being there. Which meant that there was a drain. Which meant that the room was ready for victims of torture. It was a scary thought.  
There was blood streaming from an unhealed wound on his arm, where the torturer had gotten a little excited with a pen knife and slashed open the skin deep enough that Tony knows the scar will be unsightly. In comparison to the electricity, that felt like a pin prick. The blood loss though, that was getting to him. He felt himself growing weaker and weaker, and with it, hope of surviving drained out of him.  
He’d been foolish to think he wouldn’t suffer more for the terror he’d wrought in his weapons manufacturing days. There was always going to be someone else that he’d hurt, someone else that felt he needed to be punished. He wonders if this was from Stane’s double-dealing or not. Not that it takes the blame from Tony’s shoulders, but he is curious.  
Tony screams again when the higher voltage of electricity rips through his body and sears at his nerves. His body bucks and his vision flashes white. He’s not sure how much longer he can cope with this, but he knows that there’s no way out. This man doesn’t want anything from him but his screams.

~*~*~

Steve and the team are on the Quinjet on their way to an abandoned apartment building. A witness came forward twenty minutes ago and said, in no uncertain terms, that he had witnessed a man carrying ‘That Stark Guy’ out of a van and into the building.  
It has been four days since Tony was taken, and the man hadn’t said anything simply because he thought it was just one of those weird rich people things. It wasn’t until he’d heard a plea on TV for Tony to be found that he’d thought to say anything. Pepper hadn’t been willing to keep it quiet when she had so little faith in anyone else finding him.  
Steve can’t be angry at the man (though he is). Tony is eccentric in his own, weird ways. It’s not even a negative part of his personality. In fact, it’s among the better parts. It makes him interesting to talk to and funny. Unfortunately, it also means that when people see him being carried around unconscious, they assume it’s a quirk and not something worth worrying about.  
Steve’s body aches with tension and worry as they near the place that Tony is possibly being held. He’s anxious, and he can tell the entire team feel the same way by the way they stand and the silence building between them.  
He thinks he may need to offer the team some morale boosting words. That seems to be part of his job as the team leader. Unfortunately, right now, with the fear that they may be getting there too late, he can’t find anything in him. All he has left is a prayer that they don’t fail.  
“ETA, two minutes,” Barton calls into the pit of the Quinjet.  
Natasha nods and unbuckles her seatbelt. She walks over to the door at the back and inclines her head enough so that Steve knows it’s a sign for him to go to her.  
“You’re gonna need to pull yourself together for this, Steve,” she warns.  
Steve doesn’t bother to defend himself. He’s tired and not entirely sure that he even has a defence.  
“Tony needs us,” Nat continues smoothly. “And we’re going to be there for him.”  
Steve nods. The Quinjet lands. They storm the building. Steve kicks open the door to a room with a man laying prone on the table covered in blood.  
“Tony.”

~*~*~

The pain has gotten bad enough that Tony isn’t able to stay conscious for longer than one minute at a time. The man, clearly frustrated with this, keeps changing tactics, but doesn’t seem to realise that without food or water, Tony won’t be able to survive much longer, pain or no pain. He can’t stay awake with no fuel to help him.  
“Stay awake!” the man growls, as he wraps his fingers around Tony’s neck and squeezes tight enough that Tony can’t force any air in or out. “Stay awake or I’ll kill you.”  
Tony wants to berate the man for being insane, but he’s gotten to a point where he understands why the man is suddenly crazy. He’s not slept the entire time he’s had Tony. Every minute of his life for the past however-many-days has been spent inflicting pain. He’s only stopped to eat, drink or use the bathroom.  
No matter how sane and level-headed the man was before, something cracks in your humanity once you hurt someone for long enough. It’s no surprise to Tony that he’s losing his damn marbles. Tony doesn’t blame him, and he suspects he won’t be alive long enough to try.  
See, Tony can feel his life-force slipping away. There is no way to escape, no feasible plan to run and find safety. The straps are too tight, he hasn’t been able to use anything as a weapon, and he hasn’t been given a second of a chance to fight. He’s screwed, well and truly screwed, and all he can do now is wait for death and pray it comes quickly.  
The mans hands loosen around his neck, but the ache remains. Every gasp of breath Tony takes thereafter is tainted with pain, but he manages to stay conscious, which the man seems unreasonably pleased by.  
Tony wants to beg the man to stop, but he knows he will be ignored. He wishes he could plead for it to end quickly at least, but the man, deranged as he’s become, is definitely enjoying this far too much.  
It seems almost unfair that the last living moments of Tony’s are wasted in complete agony. And worse, he has no hope of saviour. The man had told him that he was taken in broad daylight. That people in the street had watched Tony get hauled into the building. And yet, even after several days, nothing has happened. No one has come to save him. He was foolish to wish that they had. He was living in a daydream to think that people truly cared.  
“I need to go.”  
Tony knows what that means. It means that while the man is gone, off to eat, or enjoy some other luxury not afforded to Tony, he’ll leave a low-voltage shock running through Tony’s body until his return. It’s never-ending pain and it is something Tony dreads more than any of the other methods, simply because he can’t predict how long it will last.  
Tony feels the first thrum of electricity and watches as the man leaves through the door. He feels every inch of his body burning, as though he were on fire, and he just wishes he could die. He can’t handle this anymore, he can’t—   
“Tony.”

~*~*~

Tony barely comprehends what’s happening. Something is different, he’s confident in that fact, and that one alone. He thinks heard someone familiar say his name, someone that wasn’t the kidnapper. Then, the pain from the shocks fade away. His body, which had been convulsing to the tune of the voltage, collapses on the metal bed and he feels himself start to cry. He’s not even sure why. Maybe it’s the just not being in pain for even the smallest amount of time, which after so long seemed to be some kind of beautiful gift.  
“Tony, speak to us,” someone else says.  
Tony doesn’t listen properly. Not on purpose, but he finds that he’s having trouble focusing on anything, which is odd, since he’s a genius and getting onto that level usually requires copious amounts of drugs or alcohol. He used to part with so much money and only manage to attain a fraction of this feeling. He’d grow sick of the constant streams of thoughts firing through his brain at any given time and felt the overwhelming need to calm it down. He’s past those days now. He shouldn’t feel like this anymore.  
“He’s not responding to anything,” someone says.  
Yeah, it’s definitely familiar. Steve, maybe? It’s odd though, because why would he be hearing Steve’s voice after all this time?  
He falls out of consciousness again, and when he comes back, he winces, ready to feel the onslaught of additional pain, brought by the man growing angry again. When it doesn’t come, he risks opening his eyes.  
He shuts them immediately, and then opens them again.  
He’s not in the room anymore.  
In fact, this place is so clean and white that it can’t be anywhere else but a hospital.  
“Tony?”  
Tony shifts on the bed and turns, bleary eyed, to find Pepper sat beside him with red eyes and a tablet forgotten on her lap.  
“Pep,” Tony rasps with a broken smile. “Fancy seeing a girl like you in a place like this.”  
“I’m only here because some idiot I know and love comes here all the time.”  
Tony and Pepper smile at each other, neither sure where to take the conversation from there. When Pepper looks like she’s going to mention what happened, Tony tries to lift an arm to warn her not to. The movement, slight as it was, is enough to make him groan in pain.  
“I feel like I worked out for 100 hours straight in an oven,” he complains.  
Pepper looks distraught, but before she can try and ask him about it again, the door to the room opens and Tony looks over and watches Bruce come in. He looks flustered, but when he see’s that Tony is awake, he looks much happier.  
“Tony,” he breathes, relieved, “you’re awake.”  
“How long was I asleep for?”  
“Around six hours, so nothing too dramatic, but honestly, with the kind of trauma your body sustained, there was a worry that you wouldn’t wake up at all.”  
Tony doesn’t think too much about that, because he’s trying to forget those terrifying few days. Bruce can evidently tell, though, because he doesn’t try to push the subject.  
“Steve has been out of his mind with worry,” he says with a bland smile.  
“Whatever did I do to earn a second of his time?” Tony quips with a bitter edge.  
“I’ll let him explain that.”  
Bruce comes to sit next to Pepper when a doctor comes in and starts to explain to Tony the extensive damage his body has endured. Tony tries to drown out the words, because everything he’s saying is forcing bile up Tony’s throat and forcing his mind back into the room with the man, which –  
“What happened to him?”  
The doctor seems mildly confused by the non-sequitur but deigns to not reply. He signals over to Bruce, who looks pained.  
“You mean the man who… took you?”  
Tony nods though it hurts.  
“He… when we got there, he pulled out a gun and…”  
He doesn’t need to finish that. Tony figured something similar would have happened if Tony had managed to escape. More-so towards the end, since that’s when he really started to lose his mind. He’s not sure how he feels to learn that the man killed himself. Relieved that he can’t inflict any more pain on Tony? Sad that a life has been lost as a direct result of something Tony had done?  
“Don’t you dare feel bad about this, Tony,” Pepper scolds, taking his hand and squeezing it.  
“I’m not,” he lies.  
Pepper snorts, and Bruce shakes his head. Maybe Tony should up his poker face game, if he’s being read so easily.  
“Steve is on his way here with Barton and Romanoff,” Pepper tells him. “Rhodey will be here in an hour. Is that OK?”  
“Yeah, sure, that’s fine.”  
“You can say no if you want to.”  
Tony shrugs, but it hurts, and he grunts, and he hates that he sounds weak.  
“Honestly, guys, I’m fine.”  
No one believes him. He doesn’t even believe him, but really, what is he supposed to do? What can any of them do? He was tortured for a week and he’s not even completely clear on the why yet.  
“JARVIS, can you look into the man and figure out who he was? Who his… daughter was?”  
Pepper and Bruce both look at him with pity, and doctor decides he’s hearing more than he wants to and leaves. It takes JARVIS moments to bring up a dozen screens on Peppers tablet computer. She hands it over, though she sees something on there that makes her go pale and forces her eyes to widen.  
Tony scans over the information and his stomach drops. This isn’t what he had expected at all. The man’s daughter didn’t die as a result of his weapons. Instead, she was a hopeful student who couldn’t afford to get into MIT. She’d applied for a scholarship with Stark Industries and had been denied a place. After spending her entire life building up to that, being told no sent her over the edge and she fell into a pit of despair that ended in her taking her own life.  
Losing their daughter destroyed the man’s marriage and that was it. That was the final straw, and the man couldn’t handle it anymore. His hatred for Stark Industries festered and grew into something awful until eventually, he was riddled with the need to get some kind of payback. That’s what pushed him to taking Tony. That’s what drove him to doing the horrific things he did.  
“I’m so sorry, Tony. I… I remember her application…” Pepper starts to cry, and it hurts to watch. “She… she was bright, but there were so many applications just like hers… she… I’m so sorry.”  
“Don’t you dare feel bad about this, Pep,” he orders, parroting her words back to her. “This isn’t on you. It’s not on anyone. It’s a damn shame, and that’s all it is. We can’t be held responsible for this. We can’t.”  
Tony isn’t sure if he’s trying to convince her or himself, but the guilt over so many lives being in his name pools in the pit of his stomach. He’d worked so hard to make things better for everyone, to try harder to give back, to encourage the future to go to college, and he’s only managed to make it worse. Only succeeded it taking two more lives.  
“I want to be alone.”  
Tony didn’t mean to sound so angry, but the words fly out of him like vomit. He refuses to look at either of them, too disgusted with himself to willingly inflict his person on the people around him. Everything he touches causes destruction, and he simply can’t allow that to continue.  
“Please. Leave me alone.”  
“Tony—”  
“I mean it, Bruce. I… I can’t… just, give me some time on my own, OK?”  
It’s completely reluctant on both their parts, but they eventually get up and leave. Tony stares at the door as it closes behind them, and he gulps down big lungsful of air, ignoring the pain that comes with it. He deserves the pain, since that’s all he can seem to inflict upon other people.  
The picks up the tablet, though it’s a strain on his abused body. He reads the girls application essay and looks into her past. She was a model student who struggled with bullies and anorexia all through middle-school. She worked hard and always got straight A’s, but she was up against students who had won state championships in robotics and competed in science fairs across the country. For all her credits, she simply wasn’t the best applicant.  
But that doesn’t excuse it.  
So, Tony calls in a counsellor and puts him and his office on retainer so that all rejected students have 24 hour access to them. It won’t fix the problems that have already happened, but they can help the future ones. He also hires in professional academic editors. There are around twenty, and they have agreed to read through essays over the application process and contact students who are not successful to give them advice for the future and to give them direction on how to bolster their academic CV. Once that’s done, he contacts the head of the education division to change the requirements so that only students who have extra-curricular activities can join. In a way, it could be viewed as a backwards step, but if the students are aware of what they’re looking for, maybe they won’t be so disappointed when they don’t get accepted.  
Exhausted from a three hour administration binge, Tony is about ready to fall asleep when he hears an angry voice outside his room.  
“—don’t care if he’s having a hissy fit from the guilt, I want to see him.”  
Rhodey really does have a way with words. JARVIS must think so too, because a moment later, Rhodey is being admitted into the room. His angry expression softens when he sees Tony, and Tony tries not to instantly rebuff any attempts at sympathy.  
“Tony, you’re a mess.”  
“You say the sweetest things.”  
Rhodey almost has a retort ready, but then the door bursts open again and Steve comes striding in with Barton and Romanoff at his side. They look annoyed, and Tony wonders if it’s because they were told to hang back. He’s impressed they lasted so long. Normally their impulse control leaves a lot to be desired.  
“I know you wanted to be alone, and we tried to respect that, but we just wanted to come and see for ourselves that you were alive.”  
“Well, as you can see, I’m alive.”  
“You’re not OK,” Natasha tells him. “Before you pretend you are.”  
Rhodey snorts into his fist, trying to hide the smile.  
“I will be,” Tony retorts.  
“Of course, you will. We’ll be here to help you get better.”  
“And here I was thinking you didn’t care.”  
The words are said with a sleepy hue, but they aren’t taken lightly by anyone in the room.  
“Of course, we care,” Steve says. “We’ll always care.”  
“I’ll hold you to that,” Tony mutters with a stiff yawn.  
“You do that,” Nat says gently. “Now, get some rest. You’ve got a lot to recover from.”

**Author's Note:**

> Going to watch Endgame again today in IMAX and I wanted to post this before I went in cause emotions.
> 
>  
> 
> I’m not sure if the formatting is off cause it’s from my phone or not. I’ll try and fix it later if there’s a real problem.


End file.
